>> BY RADLEY BALKO
>> PHOTOGRAPHS BY BILLY DELFS
FILMMAKER TERRANCE HUFF and his friend Jon
Seaton were returning to Ohio after attending a Star
Trek convention in St. Louis. As they passed through a
small town in Illinois, a police officer, Michael Reichert,
pulled Huff’s red PT Cruiser over to the side of the road,
allegedly for an unsafe lane change. Over the next hour,
Reichert interrogated the two men, employing a variety
of police tactics civil rights attorneys say were aimed at
tricking them into giving up their Fourth Amendment
rights. Reichert conducted a sweep of Huff’s car with a
K-9 dog, then searched Huff’s car by hand. Ultimately,
he sent Huff and Seaton on their way with a warning.
That all happened last December. In
March, Huff posted to YouTube audio
and video footage of the stop taken from
Reichert’s dashboard camera (obtained
in an open records request). No shots
were fired in the incident. No one was
beaten, arrested or even handcuffed.
Reichert found no measurable amount
of contraband in Huff’s car. But Huff’s
17-and-a-half-minute video raises important questions about law enforcement
and the criminal justice system, including whether improper financial incentives
are inducing police departments to commit civil rights violations, the drug war,
profiling, and why it’s so difficult to strip
problematic cops of their badges.
‘LET ME ASK YOU A QUESTION’
The stop itself happened Dec. 4 on Interstate 70 in Collinsville, a town of 26,000
people just outside of St. Louis. Law
enforcement officials call this stretch of
highway a drug-trafficking corridor. The
account that follows is based on Huff’s
video, the unedited dashboard footage
from Reichert’s vehicle and a Huffington
interview with Huff.
After pulling Huff over, Reichert approaches Huff’s car and asks him for his
license, registration and proof of insurance. Huff complies. Reichert then asks
Huff to step out of the car, because he